Mail ballot processing team employee Kristi Behnke receives mail-in ballets as they are delivered to the Registrar of Voters office in San Bernardino on Tuesday.
Rachel Luna — Staff Photographer

SAN BERNARDINO >> As he strolled toward his car, Miguel Osorio, 22, bent over to pick up a piece of trash left on the sidewalk next to D Street.

He does it fairly often, he says, even though it sometimes earns him funny looks.

“People are like, ‘why?’” Osorio said. “It’s because I care about the city.”

In the slightly more than four years he’s lived here, Osorio said, he’s tried to participate in community cleanups, recently bought a historical home — generally makes a strong effort to contribute to the community.

That’s why he voted in the 2011 city election, why he voted in the 2012 presidential election, why he planned to vote in Tuesday’s election.

But he didn’t.

“I worked until 6 — I know polls were open until 8, but I didn’t go after that either,” Osorio said, looking downward as though in shame but then making eye contact. “I want to be honest: I should have but I didn’t.

“I think I failed the city.”

Osorio’s reaction may be an unusually strong one, but the fact that he stayed home for what many called a historic election isn’t.

The 10 candidates on the ballot for mayor collectively drew 12,630 votes — not including the 687 ballots countywide that haven’t yet been counted — in a city with 78,118 registered voters. That’s 16.2 percent, compared to 21.6 percent who cast a ballot for mayor in the 2009 mayoral election.

The percent who voted for mayor — the highest of either of the citywide races — is a slightly different measure than turnout, or the number of people who came to the polls for any race. The registrar of voters only calculated that number countywide, reporting an even-lower 8.74 percent.

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By comparison, 10.7 percent of registered voters showed up to the May election that elevated Norma Torres to the State Senate. Los Angeles’ mayoral election this March had 23.3 percent turnout and New York’s mayoral election appears to have had 24 percent turnout — both record lows, according to published reports.

But while countywide turnout was dragged down by lower-interest races such as water districts, San Bernardino officials had predicted that the engagement would be higher than usual because of the shock of San Bernardino’s bankruptcy, the major decisions newly elected officials will have to make and heavy spending on both recall attempts and the 25 candidates running for various offices.

“You hope that with all of the emotion wrapped around this election, it would have translated into voting,” said City Clerk Gigi Hanna. “It’s disappointing.”

Hanna held a news conference, sent out press releases and sponsored a contest for high school and college students to design a poster encouraging voting, with a scholarship to the winners.

Local college students also organized efforts, and youth groups made a splash with their efforts to get out the vote.

Newly formed groups Zealous Life Creative and San Bernardino Generation Now showcased art and passion at an Oct. 20 “Turn Up the Vote Live” event, bringing together more than 50 people and attracting more than a dozen candidates.

That capped off voter registration drives, event attendance and other events that had gone on since February, and several members have said they’re disappointed in their city so far.

But it’s also understandable, said Brenden Aguilera, founder of Zealous Life Creative and creative director of Generation Now.

“This is a historic time, and a lot of people are still (thinking) ‘It’s more politicians all doing the same thing,’” Aguilera said. “It’s not something that one blast just before an election can do. It’s going to take time to restore hope.”

Much like other conditions — income level, for instance — the voting level is not consistent throughout the city. While the city’s seven wards each have roughly the same number of people, some have significantly more registered voters — and a larger percentage of registered voters cast a ballot for their council member.

The percentage was lowest — 12.3 percent — in the 2nd Ward, where the candidates were an incumbent facing 30 charges and a challenger who did little campaigning until those charges were announced and was largely unknown. It was less than 1 percentage point higher in the bordering 1st Ward, which represents downtown, but in the 4th Ward was 21.9 percent.

The 4th Ward and mayoral races resulted in run-offs between the top two finishers, which will be held Feb. 4, the same day as an election for the 5th Ward seat held by Chas Kelley until he resigned.

Groups said they’re catching their breath for the moment, but soon will try to apply lessons from Tuesday’s election to that one.

So is Osorio.

“I think a lot of things need to change,” he said. “You said there’s an election in February? Maybe they’ll start with me voting then.”